· ..

the reliej and design of structures appears more clearly when content, Editor's Introduction
which is the living energy of meaning, is neutralized, somewhat like the ar-
chitecture of an uninhabited or deserted city, reduced to its skeleton by some The Houses of Memory:
catastrophe of nature or art. A city no longer inhabited, not simply left behind, The Texts of Analogy
but haunted by meaning and culture, this state of being haunted, which keeps
the city jrom returning to nature . . .
J acques Derrida
Writing and Difference

The image on the cover of the fourth Italian edition of Aldo Rossi's L'Architet-
tura della città summarizes in condensed form not only the ambivalent nature of
Rossi's architectural work, but also the intrinsic problem of its relationship to
the idea of city which is proposed by this book. This image, a horizontal section of
the Mausoleum of Hadrian in the Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome, reads as a spiral.
The spiraI is associated with the form ofthe labyrinth, a construction which, ac-
cording to classical myth, was the invention of Daedalus. Daedalus, as the only
architect of mythology and the supposed inventor of many "wondrous" works of
architecture, has become for history the symbol par excellence of the humanist
architect. As such, the labyrinth, Daedalus's creation, can be considered
emblematic of a humanist condition of architecture. But this is not the spiral's
only meaning. As an unfolding path or route, the spiral has also been interpreted
as a psychological figure, the symbol of a process oftransformation. Thus, we are
obliged to interpret Rossi's use ofthe image on the cover ofhis book in two ways:
first, in terms of the spiral as a mausoleum, as representing a symbolic pIace of
death, in this case--even ifunconsciously on his part-that ofhumanism; and at
the same time, in terms of the spiral as labyrinth, as representing a pIace of
transformation.

The spiral has a further, more personal meaning for Rossi. It symbolizes his own
rite of passage, his role as part of a generation progressively more distanced
from the positivism ofmodern architecture by the collapse ofhistorical time and
left drifting into an uncertain presento While this book in many ways is a critique
of the Modern Movement, it nevertheless reflects an ambivalence with respect
to modernism. It suggests Rossi's own uncertainty as much with the generai
ideology ofmodernism as with the failure ofthe specific aspirations ofmodern ar-
chitecture. Rossi's anxiety with respect to modernism is thus refracted through
his sympathy with its very concerns. It was, after all, modernism which focused
on the city as one of architecture's centrai problems. Prior to modernism, cities
were thought to have evolved over time through a process which was an imita-
tion ofnaturallaw. But in the view ofthe polemicists ofthe Modern Movement,
this natural time had run out, and in its piace succeeded the time ofhistoricism.

For the architects ofthe early twentieth century, the appropriateness ofthe act
of intervening clinically in the city's historical and natural evolution was beyond
questiono Supported by the enormous moral impetus of social and technological
necessity (which had replaced the model of natural evolution), theyattempted
from the stronghold of their "castle of purity' to storm the bastion of evils iden-
tified with the nineteenth-century city. To them the stakes appeared higher than
they had ever been. In this heroic climate of modernism the city of modern ar-
chitecture, supposedly born out of a rupture of history, was progressively pro-
pelled by that very history toward the vision of a sanitized utopia.

The perceived failure of modern architecture to realize this utopia-either to

supersede the nineteenth-century city or to mitigate its destruction after the
3

...
la Horizontal section of ihe
Mausoleum of Hadrian, built 135-139
A.D., later transjormed into the
Castel Sant'Angelo.
1b Drawing of a labyrinth by Dom
Nicolas de Rély, 1611, based on the
paving pattern on ihe floor of Amiens
Cathedral. This design, executed in
1288,was known as the "Maison
Dédalus" or House of Daedalus.
 bombings of the Second World War-became the primary condition confronting
the architects of a generation which matured in the early 1960s. Their disillu-
sionment and anger were in direct proportion to modern architecture's failure,
as much with its unrealized aspirations-its castle of purity-as with their own
sense of loss and the impossibility of return; these feelings were directed at the
heroic fathers of modern architecture, both for having been and also for having
failed. For Rossi's generation it was no longer possible to be a hero, no longer
possible to be an idealist; the potential for such memories and fantasies had been
taken away forever. No other generation had to folIow such a sense of expecta-
tion with such a sense of loss. Cynicism and pessimism carne to fìll the void
created by the loss ofhope.

Now let us ... suppose that Rome is not a human habitation but a psychical
The Texts of Analogy
entity with a similarly longand copiouspast-an entity, that is to say, in which
nothing that has oncecome into existence will havepassed away and alt the ear-
lier phases of development continue to exist alongside the latest one.... If we
want to represent historical sequence in spatial terms we can only do it by jux-
taposition in space: the same space cannot have two different contents.... It
shows us howfar wearefrom mastering the characteristics of mentallife by rep-
resenting them in pictorial terms.
Sigmund Freud
Civilization and Its Discontents
The Architecture of the City along with all of Rossi's production is an attempt to
build a different kind of castle from that of the moderns. It is an elaborate scaf-
fold erected for and by someone who can no longer climb its steps to die a hero's
death. Proposing an other architecture, an other architect, and most impor-
tantly, an other process for their understanding, it can be seen as an attempt to
break not only from the traditional humanist definition of the relationship of ob-
ject and subject, but also from the more recent modernist one. Modernism pro-
posed a new interpretation ofthe subject which was never fulfilled by modern ar-
chitecture; in this respect modern architecture can be seen as simply an exten-
sion of nineteenth-century functionalism. Rossi's new construct begins as a
critique of the city of modern architecture and from this goes on to propose an
other object.

The other object, the architecture of the book's title, is now defined in two ways:
as the ultimate and verifiable data within the real city, and as an autonomous
structure. But this data is not gathered and applied with the reductive scientisrr
used by the proponents of the Modern Movement city, but rather through ~
more complex rationalism provided by urban geography, economics, and above
all history. Nor is its autonomy entirely that of modernism, of the discipline o
architecture in itself. Rather, it resides in architecture's specific processes anc
its built reality.

This twofold idea of the city as ultimate data-an archaeological artifact-and o

the city as autonomous structure not only characterizes the new city as an object
but more importantly, and perhaps inadvertently, redefines its subject-the ar
chitect himself. As opposed to the humanist architect of the sixteenth century
and the functionalist architect ofthe twentieth century, Rossi's architect wouk
seem to be an unheroic, autonomous researcher-much like his psychoanalys
counterpart who is similarly distanced from the object ofhis analysis and who n·
4
g longer believes in science or progresso However, not surprisingly, this redefini-
l- tion ofthe architect as a neutral subject is problematico
,
"

n Whereas the humanist conception attempted an integration of subject apd ob-

e ject, the modernist conception polemically attempted their separation. The
g problematic nature of the practice of modern architecture with respect to the
r theory ofmodernism has to do precisely with its inability to effect this separation
n and thus its contamination with imperatives from the humanist conception.
I- Rossi intuitively understands this problem; but he cannot face the consequences
d oftaking on the unrealized program ofmodernism. Therefore, his new formula-
tion focuses on a mediating element: the process of the work. If the subject and
the object are to be independent, it is now the process, previously considered
neutral, which must assume the forces which formerly were contained in the
subject and the object. Into this new idea of process Rossi reintroduces the ele-
l ments ofhistory and typology, but not as a nostalgia for narrative or a reductive
I-z, scientism. Rather, history becomes analogous to a "skeleton" whose condition
._ serves as a measure of time and, in turn, is measured by time. It is this skeleton
e which bears the imprint ofthe actions that have taken place and will take pIace in
'- the city. For Rossi, architecture's history lies in its material; and it is this mate-
t riaI which becomes the object ofanalysis-the city. Typology, on the other hand,
,- becomes the instrument, the "apparatus"-to borrow a term which Rossi will
later use in his Scientific Autobiography-oftime's measurement; it attempts to
be both logical and scientifico The skeleton and its measuring apparatus be come
the process and ultimately the object ofthe autonomous researcher. Historyand
type, as components parts ofresearch, allow for transformations ofthemselves
o which are "prearranged but still unforeseeable."
F-
s The skeleton, an image which also appears in Rossi's Scientific Autobiography,
'- is a particularly useful analogue for this idea of city. For the skeleton links the
o city to history. It is a history which is limited to the historiographical act-to a
)- pure knowledge of the past, without the historicizing imperative to determine
)- the future. For Rossi, historicism, the modernist critique ofhistory, is an imped-
'- iment to invention. Historicism deals in causes or imperati ves while history fo-
l- cuses on effects or facts. The skeleton thus provides an analogue for Rossi's un-
a derstanding of history, for it is at once a structure and a ruin, a record of events
n and a record of time, and in this sense a statement of facts and not causes. But
these are not its only attributes. For it is also an object that can be used to study
its own structure. This structure has two aspects: one is its own abstract signifi-
~: canee; the other is the precise nature of its individuaI parts. The latter is of par-
s ticular importance because the mere study ofstructure--ofthe vertebrae ofthe
n skeleton-is far too generaI for Rossi. Any generalized framework acts as a
a mesh which always allows the most important parts to pass through-in this
e case, the city's most singular elements and those which give it its specificity.
)f
d Thus, the skeleton, which may on one level be compared to the urban plan, while
a generaI structure of parts, is also a material artifact in itself: a collective ar-
tifact. The skeleton's nature as a collective artifact allows us to understand
Rossi's metaphor ofthe city as a giant man-made house, a macrocosm ofthe indi-
viduaI house of mano Here the dissolution of scale becomes centraI to the argu-
'- ment, as will be seen. This giant house comes into being through a double pro-
,, cesso One process is that ofproduction, in the sense ofthe city as a work ofman-
d ufaiu: (manufacture), an object literally made by the hands of men; the second
.t process is that of time, which ultimately produces an autonomous artifact. The
o first process assumes a time which is only that of manufacture-a ti me with no
5
 before or after; it relates the object of manufacture, which has no extensive or in- self is a
determinate history, to mano The second process is not only singular as opposed specific -
to collective, but it supersedes man in that it has its own reason and motivation
and thus its own autonomous form, .which, by virtue of its not being determined
The loc'/.
by the subject man, is independent of its use.
I termine,
importa
This latter process, that of time, can be seen in Rossi's concept of permanence,
recente
which affects collective and individuaI artifacts.in the city in different ways. The
longer jl
two main permanences in the city are housing and monuments. With respect to
everynE
the first, Rossi distinguishes between housing and individuaI houses. Housing is
ofthe fu
a permanence in the city while individuaI houses are not; thus, a residential dis-
events, i
trict in the city may persist as such over many centuries, while individuaI houses
teristicl
within a district wilI tend to change. With respect to monuments, the relation-
mark th
ship is the opposite, for here it is the individuaI artifact that persists in the city.
then, isl
Monuments are defined by Rossi as primary elements in the city which are per-
building
sistent and characteristic urban artifacts. They are distinguished from housing,
specific:
the other primary element in the city, by their nature as a pIace of symbolic fune-
characte
tion, and thus a function related to time, as opposed to a pIace of conventionai
which ar
function, which is only related to use.
gularity
manych
As a permanence and a primary element in the city, a monument is diaiecticalIy ofthe cìt
related to the city's growth, and this dialectic of permanence and growth is The city
characteristic of time in Rossi's skeleton-city. It implies a city which not only usesanc
possesses a before and an after, but which is defined by their interrelationship. of the ar
Rossi defines primary elements as "those elements which can both retard and ac- tions cO?
celerate the process ofurbanization in a city." Thus they are catalytic. When a
monument retards the process of urbanization, it is considered by Rossi to be This rels
"pathological." The Alhambra in Granada is an example of one such part of a city an objec
functioning as a museum piece. In the city whose analogue is the skeleton, such a ever, wl
museum piece is like an embalmed body: it gives only the appearance of being shifts int
alive.
lar form
time, it i
These preserved or pathological permanences, mummified presences in the city, urban-I
often tend to owe their permanent character to their location within a specific a collecti
context. In this sense, the quasi-naturalistic urbanism of the contemporary ofthe ph
"contextualists" is dialecticalIy opposed, in Rossi's view, to the concept of
evolutionary time. For Rossi real time tends to erode and supersede the neatly Thus is c
circumscribed and meticulously observed imagery of a specific urban context. In urban hi:
light of the recent development of a so-calIed contextual urbanism which has the city,'
come to dominate urban thought some fifteen years after the originaI publication in its hist
of this book, Rossi's text can be seen as an anticipatory argument against the becomes
"empty formalism" of context reductively seen as a pIan relationship of figure a classica
and ground. associate
text.
However, permanences in the city are not only "pathological." At times they
may be "propelling." They serve to bring the past into the present, providing a Thenew
past that can stilI be experienced. Artifacts like the Theater at Arles or the individua
Palazzo della Ragione in Padua tend to synchronize with the process ofurbaniza- struct of
tion because they are not defined only by an originaI or previous function, nor by ticular tr
their context, but have survived precisely because of their form-one which is the objec
able to accommodate different functions over time. Here again, the analogue of former sr
the skeleton can be seen to be quite precise. Like the skeleton which is not living analytica
and has lost its originaI function, only its form remaining intact, the propelling skeleton
permanence continues to function as a record oftime. This argument, which in it- measure.
6

--------- -
.in- self is a critique of "naive functionalism," contains within it Rossi's concept of
sed specific pIace or locus.
.ion
ned The locus is a component of an individuaI artifact which, Iike permanence, is de-
termined not just by space but aiso by time, by topography and form, and, most
importantly, by its having been the site of a succession of both ancient and more
zce, recent events. For Rossi, the city is a theater ofhuman events. This theater is no
rhe Ionger just a representation; it is a reality. It absorbs events and feelings, and
t to every new event contains within it a memory ofthe past and a potentiai memory
gis of the future. Thus, while the Iocus is a site which can accommodate a series of
dis- events, it aiso in itself constitutes an evento In this sense, it is a unique or charac-
ises teristic pIace, a "locus solus. " Its singularity is recognizable in signs that come to
ion- mark the occurrence of these events. Included in this idea of the locus solus,
ity. then, is the specific but aiso universai relationship between a certain site and the
)er- buildings that are on it. Buildings may be signs of events that have occurred on a
ing, specific site; and this threefold relationship of site, event, and sign becomes a
mc- characteristic ofurban artifacts. Hence, the locus may be said to be the pIace on
mal which architecture or form can be imprinted. Architecture gives form to the sin-
gularity of pIace, and it is in this specific form that the locus persists through
many changes, particularly transformations of function. Rossi uses the example
ally of the city of Split in Yugoslavia. He says:
h is The city of Split which grew up within the walls of Diocletian's palace gave new
mly uses and new meanings to unchangeableforms. This is symbolic of the meaning
hip. of the architecture of the city, where the broadest adaptability to multiple fune-
lac- tions corresponds to an extreme precision of formo
-n a
) be This relationship suggests a different limit to history. History exists so long as
city an object is in use; that is, so long as a form relates to its originaI function. How-
cha ever, when form and function are severed, and only form remains vitaI, history
-ing shifts into the realm ofmemory. When history ends, memory begins. The singu-
Iar form of Split now not only signifies its own individuality, but at the same
time, it is aiso a sign, a record of events that are part of a collective-that is,
.ity, urban-memory. History comes to be known through the relationship between
cific a collective memory of events, the singularity ofplace (locus solus), and the sign
'ary of the pIace as expressed in formo
t of
atly Thus is can be said that the process by which the city is imprinted with form is
" In urban history, but the succession of events constitutes its memory. The "souI of
has the city," an idea derived by Rossi from the French urban geographers, resides
tion in its history; once this souI is given form, it becomes the sign of a pIace. Memory
the becomes the guide to its structure. If time in the chronoiogicai sense beionged to
:ure a classicai context, and in the historicist sense to a modernist context, then once
associated with memory rather than history, it moves into a psychological con-
text.
hey
19a The new time of architecture is thus that ofmemory, which replaces history. The
the individuaI artifact for the first time is understood within the psychological con-
jza- struct of collective memory. Time as collective memory leads Rossi to his par-
rby ticular transformation ofthe idea oftype. With the introduction ofmemory into
.h is the object, the object comes to embody both an idea of itself and a memory of a
:e of former self. Type is no longer a neutral structure found in history but rather an
ring anaIytical and experimentai structure which now can be used to operate on the
ling skeleton of history; it becomes an apparatus, an instrument for analysis and
n it- measure. As has been said, this apparatus, while purportedly scientific and logì-
7
cal, is not reductive, but allows urban elements to be perceived as having a be
meaning. that is always originaI and authentic and , although typologically pre- ra
determmed, often unforeseen. Its logie, then, exists prior to a form, but also
comes to constitute the form in a new way. TI
fo
Thus it can be said that the apparatus used to measure the object implies and also th
is implied in the object itself. This returns us to the analogue of the skeleton, ca
which was seen to be at once instrument and object. With this recognition ap- pr
pears a new object-apparatus, an object-as opposed to a subject-that for the th
first time analyzes and also invents. This is the other process mediating be bt
tween architect and architecture. In the past, innovations in architecture did not ex
generally occur through the object; typology was never seen as having the po- en
tenti al to be the animating force of a design processo Rossi, however, discovers og
in typology the possibility of invention precisely because type is now both pro- lal
cess and object. As a process, it contains a synthetic character which is in itself a ar
manifestation of formo Moreover, while the alteration of eertain typological ele- se
ments over time is a stimulus to invention, it is also the effect ofmemory on type tir
which allows for the new process of design. Memory fuses with history to give co
type-form a significance beyond that of an originaI function. Thus, typology, du
which previously consisted only ofthe classifieation ofthe known, now ean serve cls
as a catalyst for invention. It beeomes the essence of design for the autonomous
researcher. Re
re
Both the idea ofthe end ofhistory, when a form no longer embodies its originaI te
function, and the passing of type from the realm of history into that of memory pr
lead Rossi to his internalized, analogous design processo Analogy is Rossi's most po
important apparatus. It is equally useful to him in writing and in drawing. Itis in lai
this context that this book can be seen as an analogous artifact itself-a written an
analogue to built and drawn artifacts. The written analogue, like the drawn one, fif
is bound up with both pIace and memory. Yet unlike the city, the urban skeleton, mi
the analogue is detached from specific pIace and specific time, and becomes in- ler
stead an abstract locus existing in what is a purely typological or architectural 101
time-place. In this way, by displacing type from history to make a connection be- th
tween piace and memory, Rossi attempts through the erasure of history and UI=
transcendence of rea I places to reconcile the contradictions of modernist H.
utopia-literally "no place"-and humanist reality-built "some piace." mc
tif
The time of analogy, a bifocallens of history and memory, takes in and eollapses leI
ehronological time-the time of events-and atmospheric time-the time of iru
pIace: piace and event, locus solus plus iime-place. The piace of analogy is Rc
thereby abstracted from the real city. Linking type-forms and specific places, it fOl
dìspossesses, reassoeiates, and thus transforms real places and real times. It is
no piace, but a no piace that is different from that ofmodernist utopia precisely AI
because it is rooted in both history and memory. This suppression ofthe precise tol
boundaries of time and piace within the analogue produces the same kind of all
dialectic that exists in memory between remembering and forgetting. se:
'n
Here the analogous city can be seen to subvert the reai city. Where the skeleton so
was seen as the form and measure of specific times and places in the city, the m:
analogous design process displaces the specifics of time and piace in the city for th.
another reality, a psychologieai one based on memory. While the skeleton, as a tu
physieai and analytieai object embedded in a humanist and modernist context, of
represents verifiable data, arehaeological artifact, memory and analogy bring tic
the process of architeeture into the realm of the psychologicaI, transforming hu
8
~a both subject and object. The analogous process, when applied to the actual geog-
re- raphy ofthe city, therefore acts as a corrosive agent.
Iso
The subversive analogues proposed in Rossi's work involve two kinds of trans-
formation. One is the dislocation of pIace, the other the dissolution of scale. In
Iso the former, the logical geography ofthe skeleton is displaced through typologi-
m, cal invention. Rossi uses the example of Canaletto's painting of three Palladian
ip- projects; here, the different places ofthe projects are collapsed into one pIace. In
.he the latter kind of transformation, the dissolution of scale allows the individuaI
be building to refer analogically to the city as a whole. This is illustrated in Rossi's
iot example of Diocletian's Palace at Split: "Split discovers in its typological form an
)0- entire city. From here it follows that the single building can be designed by anal-
srs ogy with the city." Even more importantly, this implies, the design of cities lies
ro- latent in the idea ofthe individuaI building. In Rossi's view, the city's dimensions
lfa are unimportant because its meaning and quality reside not in its different
le- scales, but in its actual constructions and individuaI artifacts. Once again, it is
'pe time which connects things which belong to different scales and heterogeneous
rve contexts. This time-place continuity opposes the discontinuity between the in-
~, dustrial-modernist-city and the historical-humanist-city which was pro-
've claimed by the Modern Movement.
ms
Rossi's denial ofthe importance ofscale in the context ofthe city is thereby a di-
rect assault on most twentieth-century urbanism. Yet precisely within this con-
text it becomes problematico For with the dissolution of scale in the analogous
process there is a seeming return to the very same humanist position first pro-
posed in Alberti's reciprocal metaphor ofthe house and the city: "the city is like a
;10 large house, and the house in turn is like a small city." Rossi's attempt to propose
en an other urban model through analogy becomes conflated with this specifically
le, fifteenth-century model of the city as the microcosm of a harmonic and macrocos-
m, mie universe. For Rossi, the object represents a dialectic between the giant col-
in- lective house ofthe city and its individuai, specific houses, the city's artifacts. So
val long as this dialectic remains internaI to architecture and thereby autonomous,
)e- the city as object is separate from mano Like a truly modernist object, it grows
nd upon itself and refers to itself, acquiring its own consciousness and memory.
ist However, once it is seen to be based on a metaphorical conception ofthe house of
individuaI man, it returns again to the Albertian humanist relationship and a
fifteenth-century conception of the object. Rossi never resolves this ambiva-
-es lence in his work. For despite the latent humanism, there is always an overrid-
of ing pessimism which undercuts this potential neo-Enlightenment position. In
is Rossi's own pronouncement, "the time of each man is limited; the future, there-
, it fore, must be the present."
, is
ely Analogy, as has been said, allows for both memory and history. It mixes "au-
(se tobiography and civic history," individual and colIective. In Rossi's formulation,
of alI great manifestations of sociallife and alI great works of art are boro in uncon-
scious life. This leads him directly, if unwittingly, into a second contradiction.
The city, a social entity, is in psychological terms a product of a colIective uncon-
on scious. At the same time, as an amalgam of formai artifacts, it is a product of
he many individuals. That is, it is both a product ofthe collective and a designfor
:or the colIective. In both cases the collective subject is the centrai concept. This re-
sa turns us to Rossi's idea ofthe locus, Whereas the locus solus defines the nature
xt, ofthe object, homo civilis now defines the nature ofthe subject. The contradic-
ng tion ofthe singular object and the collective subject further betrays Rossi's neo-
ng humanism, for despite his pessimism about the power ofthe individuaI to domi-
9
 nate history, still he sees the city ultimately as "the human achievement par ex- throu
cellence." no lor
apprc
In the end, there is no model for a twentieth-century city in Rossi's work, no city.
city-object which corresponds to the collective psychological subject. Rossi
finally obscures the presence of a psychological context and undermines the Rossi
necessity for a psychological model. To propose that the same relationship be- time.
tween individuaI subject (man) and individuaI object (house) which existed in the pensì,
Renaissance now obtains between the collective psychological subject (the popu- movir
lation ofthe modern city) and its singularobject (the city, but seen asahouse at a mospl
different scale) is to imply that nothing has changed, that the city of humanist zenar
man is the same pIace as the city ofpsychological mano Rossi's psychological sub- analoj
ject-the autonomous researcher-still continues to seek his own home in the the lei
collective house ofthe city. finite
of fra;
aliena
accoui
uses of Memory Cities are in reality great camps ojthe living and the dead wheremany elements In his
remain like signals, symbols, cautions. When the holiday is over, what remains provìc
ojthe architecture is scarred, and the sand consumes the street again. There is tobiog
nothing left but to resume with a certain obstinacy the reconstruction oj ele- bothf
ments and instruments in expectation oj another holiday. ready
Aldo Rossi the dii
A Scieniific Autobiography ently t
raphic
For Aldo Rossi the European city has become the house ofthe dead. Its history, this di
its function, has ended; it has erased the specific memories ofthe houses ofindi- ginnin
vidual childhood to become a locus of collective memory. As a giant or collective
house of memory, it has a psychological reality which arises from its being a Ultimi
pIace of fantasy and illusion, an analogue of both life and death as transitional selfwi
states. For Rossi, writings and drawings are an attempt to explore this giant vatea
house ofmemory and all those specific places ofhabitation encountered between cess:t
the childhood house of fantasy and hope and the house of illusion and death. It anti
scious;
The bourgeois house of Rossi's childhood permitted fantasy, but denied the or- the my
dering oftype. The Architecture ojthe City attempts, through the apparatus of the hu
type, to pIace the city before us in sue h a way that, in spite ofhistory, memory search
can imagine and reconstruct a future time of fantasy. This memory is set into mo- ject is
tion through the inventive potential of the typological apparatus, the analogous define
design processo Rossi's drawings ofthe "analogous city" can be seen to evolve di- psyche
rectly from his writing of The Architecture ojthe City. The analogous drawing vivor,
embodies a changed condition ofrepresentation; it exists as the record ofits own
history. Thus, Rossi's drawings ofthe city, giving form to their own history, be- Peter 1
come part ofthe city, not just a representation ofit. They have an authenticity, a
reality which is, precisely, that ofillusion. This reality may then, in turn, be rep-
resented in actual buildings.

The architectural drawing, formerly thought of exclusively as a form of rep-

resentation, now becomes the locus of another reality. It is not only the site of il-
lusion, as it has been traditionally, but also a real pIace ofthe suspended time of
both life and death. Its reality is neither foward time-progres&--nor past
time-nostalgia, for by being an autonomous object it eludes both the progres-
sive and regressive forces of historicism. In this way it, and not its built rep-
resentation, becomes architecture: the locus of a collective idea of death and,
lO
 no ionger a nnanty out oniy a transmonai state. .rne anarogous urawmg tnereny
approximates this changed condition of subject-man-relative to his object-
no city.
issi
the Rossi's analogous drawings, like his analogous writings, deal primarily with
be- time. Unlike the analgous writings, however, the drawings represent the sus-
the pension oftwo times: the one processual-where the drawn object is something
.pu- moving toward but not yet arrived at its built representation; and the other at-
at a mospheric-where drawn shadows indicate the stopping of the clock, are a fro-
nist zen and constant reminder ofthis new equation oflife and death. No longer in the
mb- analogous drawing is time represented by a precisely measured aspect of light,
the the length of a shadow, or the aging of a thing. Rather, time is expressed as an in-
finite past which takes things back to the timelessness of childhood, ofillusions,
of fragments of possessions and autobiographical images of the author's own
alienated childhood-ofwhich history's narrative can no longer give an effective
account. Yet for Rossi, this personal aspect of architecture is unsentimentalized.
mis In his personal vision of time, the same dialectic applies as in the city: history
uns provides the material for biography but memory provides the material for au-
'e is tobiography; as in the city, memory begins when history ends. It encompasses
eleo both future time and past time: a project that has to be done and one that is al-
ready completed. The images of ruin activate this unconscious memory, linking
the discarded and the fragmentary with new beginnings. Here again, the appar-
ently coherent orderliness of logic is biographical, but fragments are autobiog-
raphical. Abandonment and death-the attributes of the skeleton-are through
ory, this dialectic now seen as parts of a process of transformation; death is a new be-
ndi- ginning associated with some unknown hope.
tive
'1g a Ultimately, TheArchitecture of the City, notwithstanding its attempt to pIace it-
onal self within a certain tradition of "scientific" writing about the city, is a very pri-
iant vate and personal text. It is the written analogue of yet another analogous pro-
/een cess: the unconscious revelation of a potential new relationship of man to object.
It anticipates the psychological subject-homo civilis-of the collective uncon-
scious; but at the same time, it also nostalgically evokes the individuaI subject,
~or- the mythic hero-architect ofhumanism, the inventor ofthe house. The shadow of
lS of the humanist poet hovers continuously behind the figure of the autonomous re-
nory searcher. The potential transformation ofthe individuaI into the collective sub-
mo- ject is left in suspension. Ambiguously, the object of the analogous city begins to
gous define the subject once again, not so much as a humanist-hero, nor as the
e di- psychological collective, but as a complex, divided, and shattered solitary sur-
ving vivor, appearing before, but not withstanding, the collective will ofhistory.
own
, be- PeterEisenman
ty,a
rep-

rep-
ofil-
ne of
past
~es-
rep-
and.
11